There are a wide variety of portable, battery-powered systems that use replaceable or rechargeable battery packs. Batteries, such as lithium-ion batteries, designed by original equipment manufacturers (OEM), may provide optimal end-user experience in terms of performance and safety. However, there are also low quality battery manufacturers building replacement battery packs for some battery-powered systems. These low-quality, counterfeit battery packs may pose risk to the end-user and may risk damage to the device or to the end-user. For example, a low-quality battery may explode or overheat and cause a fire. Low-quality batteries may also cause damage to the device if they do not have the correct voltage characteristics or built-in safety features, such as fuses and thermal or over-current protection. Low-quality batteries may be built with lower quality manufacturing techniques and less stringent manufacturing standards. To differentiate from the low quality components/batteries, OEMs may implement simple techniques to verify a battery pack is authorized for use with a battery-powered system. With time, low-quality manufacturers may hack the solutions and copy the authentication techniques. This may result in the system again becoming vulnerable.
An OEM may be reluctant to shift to better and more robust authentication solution because the solution may not be backward compatible to previous batteries. An end-user may get annoyed by not being able to use their older batteries with a recently purchased tool that may include a more robust authentication solution. An authentication solution that allows more robust authentication while still allowing an end-user to use their older batteries may have advantages in safety and performance of battery-powered devices.